“Cross my heart,” she said, crossing it, but the smug grin had me worried as I walked away.
57
Ara
“You know, crossing your fingers behind your back doesn’t actually make it okay to break a promise,” I said to Ali.
“Did you hear me promise?” she said, spinning around to face me.
I smiled, shaking my head. “Deviant.”
“Nah, I’m just an evil little Cerulean Witch.” She laughed. “So, how about we get you dressed and go down to the forest.”
“The forest?” I sat up a little. “Why?”
“It’s dawn—the best time to find Lilith there.”
“Oh…” I couldn’t get my head straight though. I knew I needed to see Lilith, but couldn’t remember why. Not at this hour.
“So I have a list of things we need to know,” she said, digging into her black jeans. She unfolded a page and scanned it.
“Need to know for what?”
“Well, for one”—she pointed to her thumb—“how did Lilith get cursed?”
Oh, the curse. That’s why I needed to see Lilith! I rubbed my head, trying to tune back in to Ali and to the greater known universe, but my head just couldn’t grasp the concept of waking without a coffee in my hand.
“Two”—she pointed to her index finger—“how was the curse written, or rather, by whom? Three: what did the witch use to bind the curse? And was it a spell or a potion?”
“That’s a lot of information,” I noted quietly.
“Yes, but it’ll speed up the process. I mean, Jason can go about his research and use science to find the answers, but sometimes magic is just magic and needs to be dealt with using magic.”
I ran those words over in my head, getting tangled in them. “Um, so… these questions”—I looked at the page, deciding I’d have to take it with me—“only Lilith will know the answers?”
“Yes. And also, I might need you to get a vial of her blood so we can run some tests.” She grinned apologetically. “I know it won’t be easy and, I mean, we thought about just killing her to end it, because she’s the obvious source of the curse, but you’re a carrier, so killing her won’t end it.”
Wow, these guys had gone to town on theories while I was sleeping. “What kinds of tests can you run on her blood?”
“Well, we know that you give off some kind of toxic spell, or if you want to get all scientific, like Jason, you can call it a chemical, and that goes out whenever you get close to someone emotionally. So we can assume that the part of the victim’s brain that’s affected is the limbic system—”
“How can you know that?”
“I’ve spent way too much time with Jason over the last year. Not only has it made me smarter, but it makes me throw random bits of information at people even though they don’t need to know them.” She laughed. “But for us, knowing which part of the brain your curse affects means we can aim any magic spells or potions right at it, although a general curse-breaker or protection spell won’t be enough. I can make a potion, like an antidote, I guess, using your blood, so those affected by you will be cured, but that won’t stop you from re-infecting them and it won’t stop others in your bloodline from doing it either. We kind of need to kill the curse at its source, which is what Jason would say too. He’ll most likely run some tests to isolate the exact molecule carrying the curse in the original Lilith’s blood and then he’ll try to create a kind of anti-venom of sorts or some stimulant for the immune system—he called it something else, but I forget what it was—and I’m not sure, but that stimulant might require a spell to transport it. Alternatively, if we can isolate the voodoo cell, that’s what we’ll call it, I can maybe use magic to ‘block’ it. Who knows? But whatever we do, it’ll involve weeks of testing and research, so you might as well stick around for the beheading and then fly back home and have Christmas with Harry.”
My head was spinning. It was five in the morning; the sky was still dark, and I hadn’t had coffee. How could I possibly process any of what she just said? In fact, I wasn’t totally sure she was speaking English just then. It was like being in a room with five teenage girls all chatting at once. I had no idea what just happened.
“Just get dressed,” she said, patting my foot. “You don’t need to understand any of it. You just have to get what we need from Lilith, and the sun will be fully up by seven, so you best hurry.”
* * *
Ali and Quaid waited on the edge of the forest while I stepped into the thick brush alone, feeling an odd sense of fear that I wasn’t sure I should feel in this place. The trees felt dead here, infected with something toxic and sad, but I pushed on, hoping to find my solace deeper in the forest.
No one told me what to do to summon this ethereal being. They just sort of ‘dropped me off’ here and expected me to find her, as if I could recall how to on my own. So all I could really do is wander around in the trees and hope to God I didn’t get lost. I wasn’t even sure what I was meant to feel. They all talked about some great connection to life, to all things living, and some tree I was supposed to have awakened when…
Oh. I stopped dead, my eyes wide to drink in the scene before them. So that’s what they meant.
It appeared before me in a clearing, presenting as nothing more than twisted branches, aging with time, but it was almost like I could see past its disguise. I could feel a kind of heat coming off it—something that made my arms tingle, made my ears hot on the edges. I looked up at the sky through the tree, half expecting the sun to be beaming right down onto the clearing, but the dark dawn couldn’t explain the light I saw, and nothing I’d ever come across could explain the sense I had that the tree stood as a sentry to a gateway somehow. I knew that if I walked just past it, I would connect with something else—something not of this world.
My shoes felt unwelcome in this place all of a sudden. I kicked them off and tore away my socks, laying them aside. Even my clothes felt unwelcome, but I wasn’t taking them off for anyone.
“Knock-knock,” I called, stepping into the clearing. The radiance of that supernatural light consumed me, as if I’d stepped over a threshold into another dimension. I had to look at my arms to make sure they were still there, because they felt as light as if I’d been drinking giggle water. “Is anyone here?” I tried again, circling around as I walked toward the tree.
“Amara,” a deep, sort of echoing voice said. “How nice to see you again.”
I stopped, feeling the presence of something at my heels, its pink glow meeting with the bright yellow one in front of me. “You must be Lilith,” I said, slowly turning.
“At your service, my old friend.” She bowed her head, her soft smile reminding me of Lily.
“I’m here about the curse—on our blood.”
Her smile changed and she floated backward, seating herself on something invisible, making her head higher than mine. “Why on earth would you be asking about that?”
“I need to break it. End it,” I said. “David’s trapped and—”
“Ah.” She nodded, floating to stand, moving away as though she was pacing. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a ghost pace before. “I’m not a ghost,” she said.
“I didn’t say you were.”
“But you thought it.” She appeared beside me, her finger pointed at my head.
“What are you then?” I shoved her hand down, shocked to feel that she was as solid as me, even though I could see right through her in the light.
“I am a guardian of the realm. Some refer to me as a goddess, some a demon.”
“And what are you really?”
“Whatever people believe,” she said, laying her hands out in a passive gesture, her smile betraying the smite beneath.
“Well, I don’t really care right now either way. I need you to tell me how to break this curse.”
“And what if I do not want it broken?” Her arms folded. “That curse has been of more use to me than it has been a nuisance. I rule the hearts of men—b
end them to my will. I will not help you bring an end to it.”
“You don’t have to. I only need to cure myself and my daughter, and maybe Lily.”
“That is not possible. You cannot be cured.”
“But—”
“But David can.”
I snapped my gob shut, ending my argument. “He can?”
“Those of our blood are not affected by the curse—only carry it. Drake, Lily, Harry—”
“Harry’s a boy, so he wouldn’t be anyway.”
“It is an old wives’ tale that our curse is passed on only to females.” She smiled. “It is passed on to all in our bloodline but, as I said, we cannot fall victim.”
“So how do I cure David?”
“By giving him my blood.” She reached inside the folds of her flowing pink dress and withdrew a small empty glass bottle. I looked closer, trying to make out a pocket, but I was pretty sure she just pulled that from her proverbial ass. “You cannot cure him with your blood, as you are only a descendant of mine. But my blood contains the purest form of the curse. Give it to him,” she said, laying it in my hand.
“It’s empty,” I noted, insulted by her trickery.
“Look again.” She smiled, making a fist over the rim. The curved glass filled with a dark red liquid then, but I couldn’t even see a cut in her hand. “If he carries my blood inside of him, he will be cured, as if he were one of my descendants. Then, turn him into a vampire quickly, before he sees you again. And he will be cured indefinitely.”
“But I can’t help anyone else? Falcon? Mike—”
“They will survive, as they have done all these years.” She closed my hand around the vial. “Now keep this safe, for I will not give you more.”
“I will,” I said, tucking it into my coat pocket. In essence, she’d given me what I truly needed, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted the cure. I wanted to help Mike, and Emily. And to do so, I’d have to be sneaky. I’d have to summon the part of my brain that recalled things—the part that was dead at this hour. I had Ali’s list in my pocket, but this kind of sneaky probing required wit, not a list.
“So tell me…” I took up a seat on the damp leafy floor. “What did you do to get cursed in the first place?”
Her wide, cold eyes narrowed on the outer edges into a devious smile. “I told you once that my husband had the angels curse me—”
“So angels did this?”
“No, angels cursed me to bear one hundred sons that would die.”
I placed my hand across my belly. “Why?”
“Because I would not return to Adam as he demanded.”
My lip curled. “Ass-hat!”
Lilith laughed sweetly, sitting down on her invisible throne again. “I thought so too. And so, I refused, bearing that curse for more than a century.”
“How did you break it?”
“I didn’t. I ended it,” she said with a triumphant bow of her head.
“How?”
“By giving birth to one hundred dead sons and burying them all.”
Wow. I actually wanted to cry for her. That must have been horrible. “What about their fathers—did you remarry?”
“I did. Later, once all one hundred children were long gone. But it was my determination to end that curse that saw me afflicted with another.”
“How so?”
“I knew I would not be free until I ended the curse. I had to accept that I would lose one hundred sons, but I did not want the blood of good men to go to waste, so I assumed mortal form and roamed the earth, seducing unworthy or sinful men.”
“And let me guess,” I said with an encompassing grin, forming a sisterhood bond around us that would hopefully allow her to open up to me and inadvertently spill the beans I needed, “one of the men put a curse on you?”
“Something like that.” She studied me more carefully then, her expression passive but her eyes searching mine in a way that made me defensive. “I see you are expecting a new babe of your own.”
The shield dropped and I smiled, laying both hands across my stomach. “I am, yes.”
“How wonderful.” Her hands closed together under her chin. “Another Pureblood descendant.”
I nodded, not really sure what else to say.
“This calls for celebration.” She flew like a feather on a breeze to stand before me, helping me to my feet. “I simply must bless this new life you will lead with a gift.”
“A gift?” I said, a little worried as I thought of the evil witch in the story of Sleeping Beauty.
Her hand covered the side of my face and she pressed her lips to my ear, whispering something in another language—her voice going deeper, making the day dark, the trees sing and sway around us. And then it stopped. The wind receded and the tree stood still once again, the only sound between us my thumping, worried heart.
I waited, hoping she’d explain herself, but she didn’t. She just drew back, her hair and clothes floating in a breeze that wasn’t present in this world, and smiled.
“What was that?” I rubbed at the dull ache in my head. “What did you say to me?”
“The face of the sun will be the light upon your shadows,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“Farewell, Amara.” She bowed her head, fading away. “Until we meet again.”
“Wait!” I chased after her. “I don’t understand. What did you say to me!”
Up ahead, her pink light went out like a snap. I stayed put, knowing it was stupid to chase a ghost, only mildly concerned about what she’d said to me because, not only did my heart tell me she wasn’t a threat, I was just more concerned about returning from my treacherous journey into the woods with only a single vial of blood to cure my friends and family. I wanted to cry, but I at least had to take heart in the fact that David would be set free, even if it meant letting the others down.
I headed back down the trail, carrying my shoes and my heavy heart. As I passed the dead patch of shrubs and winter grass, I studied it more carefully. It looked almost like a large creature had been sleeping in there. But what creature on earth could make everything die like that in an almost perfect circle?
I couldn’t see Ali or Quaid nearby, so while I waited, I crouched down by the dead shrub and laid my fingers to it, closing my eyes and drawing a tight breath as the charge of pure and raw hurt travelled up my arm and stuck my heart like a pin in a cushion.
“Ouch.”
“Ara!” Brett shouted, running toward me at human pace.
“Brett!” I stood up, ready to hug him. “Hi. You’re finally here.”
“Arrived about twenty minutes ago,” he said with that cute smile, taking in my bare feet and then appraising my body with what looked like disappointment. “Hi.”
He hugged me, and I hugged him back tighter.
“Ali sent me to find you.”
“Where is she?” I asked, pulling away. “She was supposed to wait.”
“She found Morgana—”
My blood ran cold. “Where? When?”
“She was…” His eyes shifted to the forest. “She was coming for you—they caught her roughly a mile off your trail.”
“Oh my God.” I dropped my shoes, moving my hand over my baby. I’d come so close to danger and I didn’t even know it.
“It’s okay.” He bent and grabbed my shoes for me, stuffing a stray sock back in. “Quaid and Ali had her before she got anywhere near you, but we have a problem.”
“What?” I said, wishing he’d just come out with it instead of leading me into suspense.
“We can’t find David now.”
Dread sucked back the suspense, flooding me with cold shock. “Does he know she’s been caught?”
“He was there when Ali called and asked me to come over here to bring you back. After that, he vanished, faster than a vampire.”
“Oh my God.” I almost folded over, imagining all the horrible things that might have happened. He was human. What if someone took him by magic, jus
t… zapped him out of the sky? What if they were hurting him?
“It’s okay.” Brett took hold of my shoulder. “We’ll find him. I promise.”
“Like the last time he went missing?” I said, holding his gaze with a look that brought up the past.
He closed his eyes, bowing his head. “I’m sorry, Ara. I should have—”
“It’s not your fault.” I walked past him. “I just need to find him. Now.”
* * *
Morgana was locked up in a cell, where she would stay now until we found David. After that, she would be taken to the square for immediate execution, as would the guard she tricked into setting her free. He was to be made an example of, and the only thing I could feel was relief that it wasn’t Blade. Lily said we had to protect those under our curse, and yet, here she was, punishing a victim. I had to wonder if she would’ve been so hasty if it had been Blade.
While Brett joined the search for David, I headed down to Jason’s lab, the cold day becoming a smoky grey around me with the impending rain and the looming dread of my husband’s disappearance. Up ahead, as the building came into view among the vastness of the rolling green hills, I saw a flash of blonde hair that I immediately knew was my daughter.
“Elora!” I called.
“Mom!” She charged at full speed up the grassy slope and wrapped her arms around me, nearly toppling me backward. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”
“What about Dad?” I drew back. “Has anyone seen him yet?”
“No.” She shook her head, stepping out widely and moving backward down the slope. “I came out here to get a feel for the energy—see if I can sense any magic or foul play.”
“And?”
She studied the ground, arms folded. “Nothing. I can feel the resonance of extreme rage, and it leaves a trail, almost as if he walked off by himself.”
“Did he, do you think?” I walked forward to see if I could feel what Elora had felt. “Maybe Brett just didn’t notice him walk off.”
“It’s possible.” She shook her head in deep consideration. “Dad might be human now but he’s still damn smart—probably smart enough to outwit Falcon.”
Bound by Secrets Page 60
